


Everything You Ever Do (Will Never Clean Up The Mess We've Made)

by thepurpleswitch (andchimeras)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, M/M, Retcon, Season/Series 01-02 Hiatus, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-11
Updated: 2006-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:03:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/thepurpleswitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dean works at the United Grocery four blocks from his apartment." Written in the s1/s2 hiatus for the 2006 SPN Angstathon. Pretty damn angsty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything You Ever Do (Will Never Clean Up The Mess We've Made)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mackeygenius](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mackeygenius).



> Title from "A Better Pain" by Matthew Good. Two-part commentary track available here: http://thepurpleswitch.livejournal.com/502391.html.

1\. _Father, will you teach me how to die the right way someday._

Dean works at the United Grocery four blocks from his apartment. Every morning at eight he clocks out and brings home a bag of day-olds and expireds. Bread, cuts of meat, fish, eggs, cheese, milk. He climbs up the sagging stairs inside his building, six flights, carrying his leftovers and a backpack full of soiled work clothes. Airless, brown-grey walls, no windows. Closed door after closed door, scuffed and scraped and beaten, greeting him at each landing, down each hall.

Time was he would have cared what was behind those doors, would have been wary, cautious.

That time's past.

 

He was very sore. Warm blood in his mouth, the wounds in his throat, in his stomach, like he'd swallowed a handful of knives. There was glass everywhere. He couldn't have said what had brought him back to consciousness, though there was a familiar ringing in his ears and muted shouting in the distance. Footsteps, scuffling, running.

"Dad?" he said, tried to say. "Dad." His voice raw and laboured and not loud enough. It hurt to breathe, a sharp peak in the constant ache of his body.

There was no noise from the front seat. Everything was dark, but the glaring white of the truck's headlights, sparking off broken glass and bloody chrome.

Burning in his throat, blood spilling over his tongue and out the corner of his mouth. "Sam--"

Movement, though, a shuffling movement in the driver's seat. Movement outside the car.

"Sam," he said. He made himself kick the back of the seat. Don't pass out, he begged Sam, begged himself, don't pass out, wake up. Help me. Help--help. Sam.

 

Dean throws away things now--he has things _to_ throw away now. He has a fixed address, and a driver's license with his real name on it.

Yesterday's milk and meat go in the plastic trash can under his sink, along with yesterday's newspaper and the shells of the eggs he is frying on his tiny stove. The thing is smaller than any kitchenette stove he ever had to cook on. The cast iron pan he found at a flea market barely fits on the largest burner.

But this is a life. This is living, making a living. This is a real life.

This is going to bed by ten and getting up at four and going to the hospital, and then it is working for twelve hours. This is moving pallets of cereal and macaroni around the back of the grocery store, keeping track of what comes in on the backs of semis and what goes out on the manual jacks wielded by the stock boys. This is Dean Winchester, hunter of witches, slayer of demons, foe of evil, driving a forklift for minimum wage.

At least he's still working the night shift.

The eggs flip over with a satisfying smacking sound and he counts three seconds, then flips them onto his plate.

He eats at his cracked Formica table under his dirty window, looking out over the street and into the living room window of the apartment across the way. On the table, under the window, is a white ceramic urn. He drinks a glass of nearly-off orange juice and eats two slices of toast, riddled with holes where the moldy bits have been poked out.

Ate worse on the road, he tells himself. Ate out of dumpsters, ate at shelters, didn't eat at all.

It's worth it, to exist like this, because every dime he saves when he takes home the stuff no one else will eat? Saves Sam's life. Keeps Dad safe. Keeps Sam alive.

 

"Oh my god!" A strange voice; Dean started from the doze he'd almost drifted into, blood sticky and congealing on his face. Cold. A warm trickle oozed out of his mouth. He wondered why he hadn't drowned in his own blood yet.

"Are you okay?" A panicked voice, feet skidding on roadside gravel and broken glass. He couldn't rouse himself to reply.

A body shape outside the car, on the passenger's side, a hand reaching through the broken window.

"Holy shit," breathed out. A call backwards, "This guy's been shot!"

Dad.

"He's been shot in the head!"

_Dad_.

Far away, someone responded, "I'm calling 9-1-1!"

Yeah, that might be a good idea.

He watched the stranger get around to his side of the car, peering in the cracked and shattered windows, leaning close to the dark shadow of Sam's head (_shot--_).

Dean waited, hoping not to hear it again.

_Shot in the head_.

"Man, can you hear me?" the stranger said to Sam.

Dean swallowed the pool of blood in the back of his throat.

Sam didn't say anything (_Dad_).

"Oh, shit," the stranger said, sounding like he was going to cry.

Dean opened his mouth. "Hey," he said, barely.

"Jesus--" the stranger finally looked at Dean and put his hand on the rear passenger window, looking through road dust and more blood. "Jesus Christ, are you awake?"

If it hadn't hurt so much, Dean might have rolled his eyes. "Fucking _help_ us," he said instead, feeling more blood dribble out of his mouth.

"Okay, okay, the ambulance--"

Dean heard the sirens break through the silence around the car like bullets through wood, finally. He closed his eyes again and let his head fall back against the seat.

 

Dean took the job at United Grocery for three reasons: it's close to the hospital; it's close to the apartment he rented, which is also close to the hospital; and they let him work twelve hours a day, six days a week. Dean likes to sleep so hard he can't remember his dreams, always has. He likes to fall into his creaky bed and sleep the sleep of the worked-to-death until his alarm clock goes off.

Most days, he eats a cheese sandwich for breakfast, looking out the kitchen window at the apartment across the way. The people who live there seem like normal folks, a man and woman; he leaves for work just as Dean gets home in the morning. The woman sits in front of the television for the little time Dean is awake to see her every day.

It might be kind of creepy that he's paying such close attention, but paying close attention is a hard habit to break. And really, as long as they're not gutting cats and using the entrails to summon demons, they don't have anything to fear from Dean.

It's ten blocks from his apartment to River Cedars Public Hospital. It's in a bad neighbourhood, almost indistinguishable from his own, but as he walks on sidewalks sparkling with broken glass, his backpack with clean work clothes slung over his shoulder, he can tell the difference. His apartment building is surrounded by other apartment buildings where poor, law-abiding people go to raise their kids in a relatively safe place. His brother is in a hospital on skid row. Where people go to buy drugs, sex, guns, and to die.

 

He opened his eyes in the ambulance as it careened around a corner, a fanfare of sirens. There was a tube down his throat and lights shining in his eyes. Two paramedics leaning over him, cutting at his clothes. He couldn't move his head. He choked around the tube, tried to ask where Sam was, couldn't breathe, started to panic. He'd never panicked before and it wasn't at all what he'd thought it would be--not nearly as easy to control. One paramedic held him down, her kind brown eyes staring into his--_please, sir, we're trying to help you, calm down_\--he heard her but he couldn't listen--

A sliver of cold in his arm as the other paramedic injected him with something. He'll remember for the rest of his life the sensation of his eyes rolling back in his head as he passed out yet again.

 

In the lobby of the hospital, Dean buys a coffee from the machine. His daily indulgence, the only way he can spare a few hours of sleep to be here.

The elevator smells strongly of antibacterial cleanser and latex. He rides up two floors alone, coffee in one hand, hanging onto his backpack with the other. The hallway of the extended care ward is bright white, linoleum floor and unscuffed walls. A white plastic rail runs along both walls, just at the right height to grab to keep yourself from falling, or stop a wheelchair from banging up the smooth eggshell paint.

Sam's door is white, with a stainless steel kick plate at the bottom and a safety glass rectangle on the lefthand side, above the handle. His chart is in the holder beside the door, a half-inch thick. Dean doesn't understand most of the things the doctors have told him are in the file, didn't understand most of the words in it when he snuck a look a week after Sam was admitted. Doesn't care what any of it means, except that Sam is here and not--somewhere else. Wherever he was when it happened, wherever he was headed.

Past the door, Sam is lying in bed, covers pulled up under his arms. IV in the back of his left hand, heart rate monitor on his index finger, tubes in his nose to make sure he gets the oxygen he needs to avoid brain damage. He doesn't breathe deeply enough on his own. The white curtains are open, letting in sunlight that seems much brighter inside than out.

Dean sits in the vinyl chair beside the bed, sets his coffee on the little table. There's a white plastic vase on the table too, with a silk daffodil in it. He opens his backpack and takes out the ceramic urn, placing it carefully in front of the fake flower in its fake vase. He pulls a newspaper out of his backpack and starts reading, sometimes out loud. He's not very good at reading out loud though, never has been, so he only does it for articles he knows Sam would want to hear--to read--himself.

Every single word is the word he hopes will make Sam wake up.

   
 

2\. _That you're relying on to lead you home._

Outside the hospital, Sam holds the urn close to his body. Their father's new truck is a distant black speck on grey asphalt, yellow lines stretching between here and there, the distance growing every second.

"I'm going to put a devil's trap on the lid," Sam says to Dean.

"Okay," Dean says. He leads Sam down the sidewalk, going east where Dad drove west. It's almost a mile to their motel from here, but he can't spare enough to get a taxi. Fucking hospital bills. Fucking--no. He won't curse his father. "And a sauwastika on the bottom, a left-facing one."

Dean almost says 'okay' again, but--"Wait, aren't swastikas for good luck?"

"It's also the Buddhist symbol for eternality. And in China, it's sewn on the inside of children's collars to ward off evil spirits."

Dean shrugs, doesn't say anything about Nazi zombies. "Okay."

He's been trying, since he woke up in the hospital, Sam leaning over him with a half-anxious, half-pissed off look on his face, his father on the ninth hour of a twelve-hour operation on his brain, not to think of all the things they could have done. All the symbols they could have used, the charms and amulets and sigils they could have made to protect themselves.

Hell, if Sam had bothered to look both ways before crossing the intersection--no.

Dean's been stopping his own thoughts a lot in the last few weeks. Sometimes he wishes he hadn't woken up after the surgery, that he was--no. Sometimes he wishes he'd forgotten all of it, the fight and the accident and--no. Sometimes he looks at Sam, talking a mile a minute like he's trying to talk them a million miles away from what's happened, and he has to stop himself from touching him to make sure he's there. They're both here. And the thing that did this, drove Dad away again and reduced Dean's lung capacity by a quarter and turned Sam into a nervous wreck--it is nowhere to be found. Inexplicable, but Dean's not really looking for an explanation right now. He's just fucking grateful.

Apparently there's a rune that will render gunpowder inert, no matter what incantations are thrown at it, no matter what ritual it is exposed to. Sam says the name of it, but Dean isn't paying attention. Signs and wonders--Sam's plan doesn't matter. It's not going to happen. They're going to dispose of the gun. They are not going to carry it around, asking for something nasty to happen. He just hasn't told Sam that yet.

 

The motel is, truthfully, an abandoned one, with moth-eaten linens and no electricity, cable, or water to speak of. Sam had wrinkled his nose after Dean kicked open the door of room seventeen. Dean had succinctly explained the state of their finances: "We're broke. Shut the hell up." And for once in his life, Sam had.

Sam puts the urn on top of the useless TV set. His fingertips linger on the lid for just a moment. "I need some paint or something to do the symbols."

"Can't afford it."

"Dean--"

"Are you having trouble with basic English today? Can't. Afford. It. Single syllables--"

"Afford has two syllables."

Dean looks up from where he's shoving his duffel bag under his bed. Sam has that obstinate look on his face. Dean grits his teeth, knows that protecting the gun, protecting themselves from it is very important. Important enough.

"Do it in blood," he says.

Sam's eyes widen. "Are you serious?"

"You can use mine if you want. Just had a top-up last month."

Sam shakes his head and waves his hands, dismissing the idea. "We're not that broke."

Dean doesn't say that he'd given almost all of his substantial stash to their father, doesn't mention buying the used truck. He doesn't say that he doesn't have enough to buy two bus tickets out of here, let alone a new car, or even to steal one. He doesn't say that he'd had to pawn his cell phone so they could have the prospect of food for the next week.

"No," he says, "I'm going to find a game." When Sam opens his mouth to complain, Dean points at him. "Shut it. Go to bed at a decent hour and make sure you do the salt lines, okay?" He surveys the room's furniture--two double beds, two night stands, a low dresser with the TV on top, and another low dresser under the window.

"I'm not eleven, Dean," Sam says. "I'm going with you."

Dean hasn't ever been very good at giving orders without explanation, not to Sam at least, and now that he's seen where that can get you, he isn't so interested in being good at it anymore. "I'm not taking the gun out of this room, and I'm not leaving it here alone. That means you are staying here with it." He pulls at the dresser under the window, testing its weight. "Maybe put this up against the door after I go."

Sam looks at the urn, anger turning the corners of his mouth down, but he says, "Okay," and doesn't say anything else while Dean buttons his coat and leaves.

Dean stands outside the motel room door for a moment, listening to make sure Sam does as he was told. When he hears the dresser scrape against the door and wall, he checks his pocket for his last hundred dollars and his switchblade, then he starts walking.

 

It's almost dawn when he raps the secret knock on the door of room seventeen, the same knock they've had since he was fifteen, the first time he and Dad left Sam alone in a room not so different from this one.

He hears the dresser scrape away from the door and the wall, and the repaired locks thunk back. Sam's eyes are tired and blurry through the two inches he opens the door.

"Let me in," Dean says and Sam leans back, lets Dean in, falls back into his bed, facedown.

There is a pizza box on Dean's bed--what part of broke Sam doesn't understand is a mystery to Dean--and the urn has been moved to Sam's night stand. There are smudges on the smooth white surface of the urn, pink and red.

"What the hell are you doing?" Dean barks. "We're not too broke to order fucking pizza and we're not so broke you'll use _my_ blood, but we're broke enough that you'll tie _yourself_ to that goddamn thing--"

"It's pizza sauce," Sam says, voice partially muffled by blankets. "It's just a sketch."

"Oh."

Sam turns over, something about the way he looks smiling, tired, dirty--no. "It's nice to know you care," he says.

"Shut up." Dean throws a bundle of bills on Sam's bed. "Count that, would you. I need some sleep."

 

Sam wakes him up to tell him there's eight hundred and change in Dean's winnings.

"How much change?" Dean says, opening one eye to see Sam kneeling beside the bed, the money in his hands. Sunlight through the dusty orange curtains behind his head, makes it look like he's got a halo. Or Dean just needs another six hours of blessed unconsciousness.

"I'm not sure--"

"Count it," Dean says, then rolls over and goes back to sleep, Sam muttering in the background.

 

He dreams the last time he saw his dad, outside the hospital, giving him the keys to the 1987 Silverado. There are tight smiles and misunderstandings, because it is completely foolish for Dad to be doing this, leaving them with the gun. It's stupid. He just had a bullet taken out of his brain, spent almost a month in recovery. He wears a faded Royals cap over his shorn head.

"I trust you," he says to Dean.

Sam rolls his eyes.

"I trust you to take care of the gun, and your brother."

Dean nods.

"I trust you to do what needs to be done," his father says.

Dean says, "I will." He takes the gun out of his jacket, when it wasn't there, it was in Sam's bag, and he points it at his father's forehead.

"What the hell--" Sam puts his hands up, tries to reach for the gun.

His father smiles; this is exactly what he meant.

Dean squeezes the trigger, just like his father taught him, and the shot wakes him.

There is a dark thing crouched in the corner, and Sam is standing over it, Colt in his hand. The salt line disturbed at the door, neither one of them redrew it when Dean came back. A familiar ringing in Dean's ears.

"Sam," he says, carefully.

"It's a nightwisp," Sam says. "It was going to kill us in our sleep." He cocks the gun.

Every muscle in Dean's body clenches, ready to push him forward and save the Colt. No. "Sam, you can kill it with pine smoke, what the hell're you doing?"

"It needs to be over," Sam says.

The nightwisp's eyes, shallow wells of darkness in a face made of darkness, twitch from Sam to Dean and back. It looks ready to bolt, take its chances now that Sam's momentum has been broken.

"If there aren't any more bullets, it's useless, we can just throw it away--it'll be over."

Rage swells in Dean, more anger than he's felt in probably five years, that Sam would think it'd be okay for all of them to go through all of this shit, just to toss that fucking gun in the trash. Leaving it in a safe place is not the same as throwing it away. "Put it down," he says.

"Dean--"

"Put it _down_. _Now_."

Sam looks over his shoulder at Dean and the nightwisp disappears in a flicker of shadow. Sam drops the gun, it thuds on the stained carpet, and he slowly drops himself to the floor.

Dean gets up from the bed and kicks the gun away from Sam. He sits on the floor next to him.

"We're going to take it to a safe place," he says. "We're going to protect it until we need it." He pauses. Plans can change. Sam changes plans. "The symbols and signs you've been talking about."

Sam shakes his head. "Someone could find it--it could be gone when we go back for it. No protective emblem is entirely effective; most of them even wear off over time."

"So we should toss it? Use up our only chance on the supernatural equivalent of a housefly?" Dean shakes his head back. "No." He shifts, reaches over, puts his hand on the back of Sam's neck. Squeezes. "My car did not die for that."

Sam laughs, it sounds like he's trying not to, and leans up into Dean's hand, and then over, head resting on his chest. The weight makes the scabbed incision from Dean's surgery twinge a little, but he shrugs it off and keeps his arm around Sam.

He feels it when Sam falls asleep, his body turning to dead weight. The gun is under the dresser with the TV on it, light from somewhere glinting dully on its dirty metal.

 

A week after Dad drove off; Dean's made almost fifteen hundred dollars and he can tell that Sam is itching to be out of the motel squat. Dean would like to have a couple hundred more, just to balance his initial investment, but we can't always get what we want. Living in an abandoned building probably isn't the best thing for his recovery anyway.

They need to find a room with a working TV somewhere. They're agreed on that. First, though, they need a car.

In his travels through this small city, Dean has seen many candidates for his next baby on lawns, in alleys. He takes Sam to see his favourite on Saturday afternoon. It's sitting in the very back row of a rundown used car lot, half a dozen mark-down signs on its windshield. It's way too big, but Dean figures that means they can both sleep in it comfortably.

"It's a boat," Sam says.

Dean opens the rear driver's side door--suicide doors, and hasn't he always wanted a car with those? "It's a classic."

"It's a Ford," Sam says. He's standing on the other side of the car, arms crossed. The salesman has long since wandered off. There isn't going to be much commission on this sale.

Black leather interior, black exterior, lots of chrome, not too much--she'll shine like a dark diamond when he's cleaned her up. The trunk is enormous and he can already see it filled with new guns and a set of axes and Sam's going to need his own equipment, more than the Impala could ever have hoped to hold--not that he's thinking ill of the dead. Just saying.

"It's a '67 _T-bird_, Sam." He doesn't start listing the cool things that make this car worth owning. Sam doesn't care. "Besides, I'm not ready to drive a Chevy again."

"How are we going to fuel this thing?"

"Hope," Dean says. The engine was re-done fifteen years ago, it'll run on regular gas. He opens the glove box, pleased to see that the light still works.

Sam throws his hands up. "If you're going to buy it no matter what I say, why am I here?"

"See if you fit in the back," Dean says.

"What?"

"Lay down in the back seat, see if it's big enough for you." He slides into the driver's seat and wraps his hands around the wheel, imagining miles of empty road stretching in front of him, windows down, Maiden on the tape deck he's going to put in, Sam beside him, the ache of a job well done in his bones.

Sam leans on the back of his seat, arms crossed along the top, just touching the back of Dean's head. "It's big enough," Sam says. "How much?"

It's weird how Sam only cares about money when it's not something he wants. "Get out. I'm taking her for a spin."

"How much does the tag say?"

"It's a steal, Sam," Dean says. It really is. A car like this--probably worth three, four grand, even with the rust and the moss on the chrome and the shitty factory suspension.

"Dean--"

He meets Sam's eyes in the rear-view mirror. "We can afford it." He isn't lying.

Sam nods and smiles a little bit. "Okay."

They haven't heard from Dad. Sam's cell phone, charged every couple of days at the local public library while Sam does research and Dean reads _American Classic Car_ or back copies of _Gothic_, has not rung even once.

 

Sam got Dean out of the hospital four days after the accident, promising the doctors and nurses he would keep Dean's wound clean and make sure he took his medication. Sam had a nasty bruise on his forehead and a lingering ache in his neck. Their dad was in and out of consciousness in the ICU.

They sat on a bench at the bus stop outside the hospital for an hour that afternoon, not saying anything to each other. Dean thought about the strangers who'd chased off whoever--whatever--had shot his dad, killed his car. Thought about the mysterious lack of questions regarding the small arsenal in his trunk and the phone book's worth of credit cards under the driver's seat. The Colt. The terribly sad look on Sam's face when he'd told Dean the Impala was a write-off. He wondered what Sam had been up to while Dean was out of commission. He didn't ask. He knew he'd been sleeping at the hospital, alternating between Dean's bedside and his father's. Didn't matter.

Sam said, "I got the gun back. The paramedics found it in your coat. They thought it was a really nice antique. I don't think they knew about the trunk, or they wouldn't have given it to me."

Dean nodded. He rubbed the bruise on the back of his hand where the IV had been stuck in. It was a pretty vivid mottled purple-green mess, but it didn't hurt that much.

"You've got antibiotics and anti-inflammatories to take for like a month, too."

Dean nodded again. He'd been cut open for all kinds of reasons, medical and malevolent, but he'd never lost a chunk of his body before, not even his appendix, not even his tonsils. A piece of himself, a lobe of his lung, popped and ruined, gone.

"Dean?"

He looked over at Sam, the quietly terrified look on his face. "Yeah?"

"What are we going to do?"

Dean looked out at the road. "Find somewhere to sleep. Find something to eat. Come back and see if Dad's awake in the morning."

Sam put his head in his hands. "I mean," he said, muffled, "Long-term, big picture, what are we going to _do_."

Dean stood up, a hand automatically going to the dully sore incision in his chest. "Find somewhere to sleep. Find something to eat. Come back and see if Dad's awake in the morning."

He turned east and started walking, trying to ignore the little hitch on his right side, the little limp he had to have to keep the staples from tearing.

He felt Sam come up beside him after a dozen steps. He couldn't quite not smile.

 

Dean hasn't told Sam that he pawned his phone. Easy enough a secret to keep when they're together most of every day and Sam knows better than to call him when he's playing pool or cards.

Except apparently he doesn't.

"Checked your messages lately?" Sam asks him on a Thursday evening.

Dean puts the small bag from the art supply store on his bed before answering, "No," and asking, "Why?"

Sam gets up from his own bed, where he'd been sketching more symbols on old paper bags--Dean should have bought him a new notebook, or a nice leather journal like Dad's, but he didn't think of it--. He crosses his arms, cocks his head. "Just occurred to me, you haven't been charging your phone and you haven't been calling at all hours to check up on me, so I tried calling you. The cellular customer I was trying to reach is no longer in service." Sam shrugs angrily. "What's going on, Dean?"

He's lost count of the number of times he's had to lie to Sam in the last year, never mind how many times he's done it in Sam's life--but he's always started out with the intent of honesty, and Sam's a little too smart to fall for most of the stories Dean can come up with these days.

"Hocked it."

"What? Why?"

Seriously. "So you could get a pizza the other night."

Sam rolls his eyes. "You're still mad about that?"

Yeah, he _is_ still mad about that. Sam can't try to take care of him, telling him to take his meds and change his bandages and get more sleep, not when he can't even take care of himself, and being a fucking psychic genius or something doesn't--no. Stop. Shouldn't have told him where the money was in the first place. Done fighting. Not worth it.

"I got the stuff you need to go all Martha Stewart on the urn, okay?" Dean gestures at the white plastic bag and starts taking off his jacket.

"Dean, you can't just not have a phone. What if--"

For fuck's--"We needed the money. Now we don't. I'll buy a new one." He hangs his jacket on the doorknob and takes the bag of salt from the dresser under the window. "Don't get your panties in a knot."

Sam sighs and Dean starts redrawing the line at the door. He hears the plastic bag crackle and the snap and tear of the package around the pot of ceramic paint--a deep burgundy red. Sam laughs quietly.

"Faux finish," he says and Dean hears the bed springs squeak as he sits down, paper rustle as he picks up his plans, and the scratch of his pencil as he starts working again.

 

They move on Monday morning, across town--Dean's silent acquiescence to Sam's silent belief that their father _will_ come back for them--into another double room, the Thunderbird parked outside the window so all he has to do is twitch the curtain to see it. The room has a kitchenette. The place is clean and smells clean and Dean's not concerned there might be things living in the mattresses, squirrels or gremlins or something. He can tell that Sam wants to wrinkle his nose at the décor--not so much retro as archival--but he holds it in.

Sam claims the first shower and Dean is unable to trick or talk him out of it. In the end, he figures it really doesn't make any difference, except the dawning understanding that Sam's decided to make up for six weeks of sponge baths in convenience store toilets by taking a fucking six-hour shower.

He grins at Dean as he comes out of the washroom, looking like he has every towel in the place draped over himself, water dripping off him onto the carpet--no.

"There better be some hot water left," Dean says. He feints for the towel around Sam's waist on his way past, catches smooth skin and the rough edge of a scar with his fingertips, grabs the one off Sam's head instead. He doesn't quite catch the epithet Sam mutters behind him.

There are about three minutes of hot water left, as it happens, and Dean's glad he washed his hair as soon as he got in the tub. He puts his back to the chilly spray and does some math in his head.

They'll be okay for a couple of weeks, money-wise. Have to get moving, now that he's done his meds, and--find Dad. Again. And find the demon. Again.

His lungs and throat feel raw. He almost died, his father was as good as dead for a little while and Sam was left _alone_, and it was for nothing. _Nothing_.

He's surprised by the force of the wracking sob, has to brace himself against the tile surround. The sound of it echoes in the shower. He wouldn't have thought he was capable of making a noise like that.

"Dean?" The doorknob starts turning. "Are you okay?"

The tears on his face are hot, almost like bleeding from the eyes again. "I'm fine! Go away."

The knob clicks closed.

 

For like an hour and a half, Sam has been sitting at the kitchenette table, dipping his brush into the pot of ceramic paint, hovering it over the urn, then putting it back in the pot.

Dean's been sharpening his newest acquisition, a foot-long silver dagger. He's also been making plans for the T-bird, watching Sam, reading the local paper, contemplating another shower. He's sitting in the other chair, his feet up on his bed, newspaper in his lap. Sam sighs heavily, wipes the brush on his jeans, and starts putting the lid back on the pot.

"Just do it," Dean says.

Sam shrugs. He takes the urn and the paint to his bag on his bed. "It can wait 'til tomorrow."

"No, it can't." It's already waited a week. "Do it now; we'll leave in the morning and find someplace to hide it."

Sam shoves the paint back in his bag.

Dean watches him start wrapping the urn in a couple of sweatshirts.

"Did you hear me?" he asks.

Sam drops the bundled urn on his bed, then sits heavily beside it. "I can't do it," he says.

Dean cocks his head and says, "Come again?" When does Sam ever think himself not capable of something? Except that once--no.

"What if," Sam folds his hands together, holds them up in front of his mouth, "What if I'm wrong about something?"

Dean rolls his eyes and tosses the paper on his bed.

"What if linking these symbols is a terrible mistake?"

Dean stands up and sits beside Sam. Sam turns his head toward him, not making eye contact, and he looks really scared.

"What if one line is crooked, or one intersection changes the whole thing? What if I just don't know enough--"

Sam shakes his head and Dean hitches his knee up on to the bed, pulls him close, holds him tighter. "What if combining the sauwastika and the emet sigil raises, like, Nazi zombies or something--"

Dean can't stifle a laugh and Sam laughs a second later, then gets quiet again.

"I can't," he says--

Dean pushes Sam's head to his shoulder, wraps a hand around the back of his neck. His other hand is a fist on Sam's back, because--this is way too close. When Dean feels hot tears soaking through his shirt, he buries his face against Sam--between his own arm and Sam's neck.

He says, "Sammy, don't cry, please," and feels his mouth move on Sam's skin. Sam's shuddering breath.

Please don't cry. "Don't, Sam." Somehow the end of his sentence becomes his lips pressed to Sam's jugular, at the corner of his jaw.

Sam makes a small noise, in his throat, and Dean holds him tighter, moves his head away, then presses his lips to Sam's neck again.

This time Sam gasps and mouths at Dean's shirt, so Dean does it--presses--kisses him again, higher, on his cheek.

There is noise in the movement of Sam's mouth against him--"What, Sam." Whispering in his ear without meaning to.

"Don't," Sam is saying. "Don't, Dean. Stop it."

Dean leans back, lets Sam go a little. He tries very hard not to feel the acid shame in his throat. Can't believe he lost it like that--he can feel Sam tense and heavy beside him, in front of him, all around him, like always.

Sam touches him, the wet spot on Dean's shirt made by his tears and his spit and Dean looks at him, opens his eyes, unaware of having closed them.

"You can't--" Sam says, staring over Dean's shoulder, the orange glow of the motel room lamp making each tear track shine. He moves his hips restlessly and Dean finds himself putting his hand in his little brother's lap, feeling the strange stiffness of--his dick, Sam's, hard under his jeans. Sam swallows, then turns his head, looking at Dean with eyes like the wound in his chest.

"Dean." He shakes his head. Dean shakes his head back. He holds Sam's jaw and all he has to do is duck his head, so he does. He kisses Sam and Sam--doesn't pull away again.

Sam says, "God," or something, against Dean's mouth and pushes closer, and pushes Dean's mouth open with his tongue. Sam tastes like the leftover Chinese food they had for dinner--szechuan beef and seafood chow mein and fortune cookie.

Familiar. Sam's hands touch Dean's face and curl into fists, the knuckles pressing almost painfully into the bones of his skull. He can feel his skin moving against them as his jaw moves, Sam's mouth and teeth and tongue on his. Sam's hips shift slowly, in the same rhythm as his tongue, nudging his dick against the back of Dean's hand. Dean presses back, keeping the same pace.

Sam opens his hands again, fingers spread over his forehead, palms on his cheeks, and Dean rests his free hand on Sam's neck, not quite holding him in place. Sam bites his bottom lip and bends his head, one hand falling to Dean's back, clawing at his shirt, raking it up until his skin is exposed and Sam's fingernails score a line across his spine.

"Ow, shit," Dean says into Sam's shoulder, his shirt falling down over Sam's hand. Sam runs his nose down Dean's neck and Dean can feel his hard, panting breaths against his collarbone.

"That how you want it, Sammy?" he says, accidentally-on-purpose slipping into the dark tone he often uses with women and Sam shudders, deeply.

Makes a little--moaning noise, through his teeth, like he's trying so hard not to do it but he just can't help himself. Dean moves his fingers through Sam's hair, closes them, pulls Sam up and might make a slightly embarrassing noise himself, looking at Sam's flushed face and closed eyes. Can't not kiss him again.

Sam pushes at his shirt, drags at it, his palms sliding roughly over Dean's back and shoulders and chest in a really very--nice way. Dean pulls his shirt up as far as he can without breaking away, pulls his arms out of the sleeves, hopes Sam will be satisfied with it hanging around his neck. Can't give him a chance to think again.

Sam's teeth are so smooth, and surprisingly sharp when he nips and tugs at Dean's lips, Dean's jaw, Dean's neck. He mutters when he encounters Dean's shirt, and yanks it roughly over Dean's head, catching painfully on his ears.

"Jesus, Sam," Dean says. Sam bites at Dean's collar bone once, twice, three, four times. Jesus Christ, Sam--Dean is rocked back by each bite, his hand moving over the burgeoning ridge in Sam's jeans. Sam starts licking at his shoulder and Dean snags the hem of his shirt, pulls it up and over and off fast enough to hopefully make Sam appreciate just how much his own ears stick out from his head.

"Ow," Sam whispers, raising a hand to his left ear.

"Suck it up," Dean says. The word "princess" is implied enough for both of them to hear. He puts his hands on Sam's shoulders and presses him back. Sam resists, grasping at Dean's wrists, looking like he wants to growl and bite at Dean again.

So Dean shoves him down, and Sam goes, holding on to Dean with a hard enough grip that Dean almost loses his own balance. Not quite. He holds Sam's shoulder tightly and leans down to him, kisses him so Sam pushes up, pushes into his mouth again. Dean pulls his hand, Sam's still clamped around his wrist, down, dragging his fingernails on Sam's chest, stomach, catching on the waist of his jeans.

"Uh," Sam says against his mouth when Dean pops the button, drags down the zipper quickly. Sam closes his mouth to hiss, his teeth scraping on Dean's bottom lip but not biting.

Sam's shorts are damp with heat, a sticky spot bleeding from the head of his dick. Dean swallows hard and twists his arm in Sam's grip, pushing his hand against skin, under, feeling hot, sticky fluid on his palm--Sam's hips and head jerk up from the bed when Dean's hand makes contact with his dick and he rips his hand away, presses it to his forehead, eyes closed, throat working, fingers around Dean's other wrist squeezing and moving. Dean closes his fingers around Sam's dick, forgets that it's his left hand and it's backwards and he's not getting any feedback from his own dick except the worn feeling of his own underwear and the restriction of his own zipper.

His throat feels raw and his chest hurts and he starts pulling, pumping Sam's dick--squeezing up, smoothing down. He tips his head to get a good look at Sam, eyelashes fluttering, mouth pursed like it's painful. It doesn't take long for Dean's arm to start burning, getting tired, never realised just how right-handed he was--

Sam makes this cut-off crying noise and Dean wants the rest of it, so he kisses him again, digs into his mouth for the sound, gets nothing but Sam's tongue. More of Sam's surprisingly muscular kisses, Sam's hand curled hard around the back of his neck. The angle makes his hand twist funny, Sam moans and cringes and pushes into it, like he's been thirsty for days and this is the last drink of water he'll get for a month, like he knows the water's going to make him sick but he just needs it so bad.

Dean almost bites Sam's tongue off when he feels fingernails against the skin of his stomach, scratching at him, and then there is an easing of the pressure on his dick. Abruptly over, Sam's sweat-sticky hand wrapping around him, his fingers rubbing--not hard enough. Dean pushes into his hand and Sam's grip tightens reflexively.

Not going to take--Dean lifts his head, his jaw aching, gasps, "Fuck," and Sam bites down on a whine and comes. His hand squeezes, convulses, stills, his dick spits like a vindictive demon, hot and burning on Dean's hand.

Dean opens his hand when Sam stops shaking and it slides over his stomach, down his side, curving around his waist. He rests his forehead on Sam's shoulder. Just for a minute.

Sam breathes heavily into his ear, the raw feeling in his throat is getting worse. Sam curls his fingers in Dean's hair, around his dick, starts moving his hand again.

All soft and rough, long fingers, cessation and starting of breath on his skin, in his ear, hot on his dry skin and cold where he's sweaty, Sam saying something he can't understand, so quiet he can't hear it. His own heaving breath, rasping and scraping. Sam squeezing sensation out of him, holding him close, his face pushed uncomfortably into Sam's chest. Pulling it out of him, the clammy feeling of Sam's come on his hand in the scratchy motel blanket, can't move, might stop, can't stop. He hears himself panting, he's always been quiet, he rides into Sam's hand once, twice, feels Sam's thigh come up on the third pass, four times, one more time against hard muscle and sweet hand--

"Oh god," he says, "Sam," and comes.

There is a long moment of just quiet, with their breath slowing, and Dean thinks he might have got away, might have just changed everything. He thinks Sam might let him go to sleep.

Sam pulls his hand out of Dean's pants and starts trying to push them off.

"Sam--"

"Shut up," Sam whispers fiercely, then bites his neck, and Dean does.

 

Dean dreams hiding the urn in an abandoned mine that has cigarette burned carpet just like the abandoned motel. He hikes into and under a nameless mountain somewhere in California and he buries the urn deep in a pile of debris. On the back of an old birthday card he's made a map of the turns and twists and double-backs needed to get to the hiding place. He carves one last symbol on a chunk of rotted beam and leans it up against the earth wall beside twisted lengths of duct tape, scraps of metal and broken glass.

He's not sure what he's carved. He looks closely at it, holds his lantern up to it. Must be something he saw Sam draw once, something he saw in Dad's notebook. He has no idea what it means.

He tosses his careful map into the pile and figures if he can't remember how to get back out to daylight on his own, he was never meant to anyway.

 

Dean wakes up just about where he fell asleep, his face turned away from Sam's snoring. Sam says something against Dean's neck, Dean can't hear it, only knows he's talking because he can feel Sam's lips moving and the breath leaving his mouth.

He doesn't turn his head. He doesn't want to see, and he's always suspected that he's secretly a coward.

"Sam?"

Sam's neck bends minutely, his lips press to Dean's neck in almost the same way Dean pressed his lips to Sam's neck in the first place. He pulls his hand out from under Dean's shoulder and his other hand from Dean's hip. He leans close over Dean, leaning into Dean's shoulder, his hands braced on either side of Dean's chest. Sam takes a deep breath through his nose, like he wants to get all of whatever Dean smells like into his lungs before--

Sam pulls back, stands and is pulling on his jeans, his shorts still inside. Dean sits up and feels like he ought to pull the sheet up over his nakedness for the first time in his life. Sam tugs a long-sleeved shirt over his head, the button on his jeans undone. He is straight as a stick against the dark wood-panelled wall, staring at Dean, hands in fists at his sides. Dean recognises the clench of his jaw--Sam trying not to scream, Sam trying not to cry, Sam breaking his arm after falling off his bike, Sam totally unable to fight the incredibly unfair thing that has happened to him. That has been done to him.

Dean wants to throw up and roll his eyes at the same time.

He rolls his eyes. Less messy. Sam's mouth tightens infinitely, then he stalks into the bathroom and slams the door.

When the water starts running, sounds like from the tap and the shower head at the same time, Dean roots through the sheets for his shorts. The nausea in his stomach stills and curls intermittently, unpredictably. He finds his shorts at just about the same moment as he realises he could just get another pair out of his bag. He puts on the dirty ones, thinking he'll have clean ones to look forward to after he has his shower.

Something hits the bathroom door from the inside, bounces on the linoleum floor a couple of times, sounds light, like a shampoo bottle maybe, and Dean's guts lurch again.

What is he--thinking about taking a shower? Thinking about his underwear? Like it's a normal--dull light through the filmy white curtains, he suppresses the urge to go look at his car, must be almost nightfall--like it's a normal evening, like everything's all right? Not normal, not right--abnormal, wrong; never, never, ever supposed to let that thought see the light of day and he didn't, really. Didn't think it at all. Didn't _think_ at all.

He pulls on his jeans after untangling them from the bedspread and rifles through his bag until he finds his lone hoodie. Dingy dark grey with a hole in the pocket. A Skinny Puppy tour itinerary on the back--he was seventeen for crying out loud, it was a phase. He sits on the edge of his unrumpled bed, barefoot, and breathes into his hands until the water shuts off.

It's another five minutes before Sam comes out, hair uncombed and tangled. He goes straight for his duffel and gets out a pair of socks, pristine white and folded with military precision. Dean remembers the disgustingly sweet story of Jessica teaching Sam to fold socks at the laundromat near their apartment, right after they moved in together. His stomach squeezes blearily. Sam pulls on his runners and pushes his arms into his jacket.

Obviously, he is leaving the room.

The question is: when will he be back?

He zips his duffel closed and heaves it next to the door.

Dean bites the inside of his cheek--can't afford a visible reaction.

Sam stands at the door and throws back the deadbolt, pulls down the chain. He puts his hand on the doorknob and--looks back, over his shoulder.

Dean wishes he'd put on some socks too. He feels--unprepared. Naked.

"You're not going to say anything?" Sam asks. Familiar tone of frustration, confusion; a plea for clarity, for Dean to give his position so Sam can figure out where he himself is.

Dean meets his eyes and shrugs.

"If you're going," he says, "go."

   
 

3\. _There are eight hundred yellow lines between here and a better pain._

The anniversary of his mother's death is a Saturday, Dean's night off. He forces himself to sleep for an extra hour, until five, then heads for the hospital.

He's been saving up a little money. There's some sort of widows and orphans fund at the hospital; they've been helping out with paying for Sam's stuff the last few months, leaving some left over at the end of Dean's pay cheques. Dean isn't going to point out that they're not exactly orphans, and technically, Sam's the widower. Would-have-been widower. Whatever you call the guy whose fiance is dead.

So he's got a little money now, he's got a TV and some clothes that aren't for work. He usually gets pizza delivered on Saturday nights, or Chinese. He never orders szechuan beef and he never eats the fortune cookies. He's not saving up for another car. If he has another car, he will want to drive it. He'll want to drive for hours and days and that will take him too far away from Sam--sometimes he knows he'd want to drive for hours and days for just that reason, to get away from Sam, and that reason is the biggest reason why he is not saving up for another car. He's glad, most days, that he sold the T-bird for the money to get Sam his own room.

Sam's room is a bit chilly. Dean takes the spare blanket from the linen closet and pulls it up over Sam. He's laying a little off-centre, and Dean will make sure to mention that to a nurse on his way out.

Sam moves, because they never put him back in exactly the same place when they wash him and change his bedding. It freaked Dean out a little the first few times--he thought Sam was waking, alone, and then falling away again, alone, with no one there to catch him. It bothers Dean now when he notices that Sam is crooked--like the nurses don't care about his comfort. Dean might be over-compensating.

He's learning to live with it.

 

Northbound on the I-90, two-thirds of the way past Olallie State Park, Dean's phone started singing "Back in Black."

Which meant it was his dad. After not calling for like six months. Again.

Dean grabbed the phone from his pocket and pressed the answer button before he got it to his ear.

"Dad?"

"Are you driving?"

"Yeah. I'm in Washington--do you remember that time--"

"Pull over."

Dean's hands tightened, one on the phone, one on the steering wheel. He was tempted to put the gas pedal to the floor and hang up on his father, but he didn't. He pulled over.

"Okay, I'm pulled over. What?"

"I need you to go to Ohio."

"I've got a job in North Bend, I can't just--"

"Dean," his dad said, and Dean knew. "It's Sam."

 

On Wednesday, Dean is moving a wobbly pallet of sugar, a hundred white bags shrink-wrapped to the wooden frame. The back of the store is as quiet as it ever gets, the growl of his forklift and the thunk-thunk of the stock boys' manual jacks. It's only one in the morning--at two, the semi trucks will arrive, and by three, the place will be full of people in steel-toed boots, unloading fresh stock from the trucks. Produce first, then dairy, meat, and, because it's Wednesday, two cages of magazines, crossword puzzle books, and Archie comics.

Dean manoeuvres his machine past the freight elevator, through the sickly sour stench of rotten vegetables and spoiled milk. Stock gets dropped down the elevator shaft, accidentally, falls into the gaps, can't be retrieved, goes bad where it lands.

As he's setting the sugar down, he thinks he hears his name over the PA. He pushes his earmuffs down onto his neck and looks around. His supervisor is standing in the window of the control office, the PA mike in his hand, looking back at Dean. He points at Dean, says, "Yeah, Winchester, you," into the mike, and gestures for him to come in.

Dean turns his machine off, the keys snapping into his thigh on their elastic tether. He jumps to the floor, takes off his gloves and shoves them in his back pocket, straightens his flannel work jacket.

Steven is his supervisor's name--he is probably twenty-three, wears a company-green tie and a short-sleeved white shirt with a name tag on it.

"Got a call for you," Steven says when Dean gets into the office. He jerks his chin at the phone on his desk.

Dean takes one step towards the phone, reaches his hand out. No one but the hospital has his work number.

He picks up the receiver, avoiding Steven's curious stare. "Hello?"

A quiet female voice, unfamiliar, says, "Mr. Winchester?"

"Dean. Yeah."

"I'm Mary Campbell, I work at River Cedars. I'm calling about your brother Sam."

"Yeah."

"Mr. Winchester--Dean, this isn't bad news, but--"

"Just tell me." For Christ's sake.

"Sam is awake. Dr. Regier thinks it would be better if you wait--."

"Screw that," he says. "You tell him I'll be there in half an hour."

He hangs up on Mary Campbell and turns to Steven. "Family emergency," he says. He tries not to menace or use the scary voice, but--"I get two days."

Steven nods, eyes wide. "Put the fork in the back," he says weakly.

Dean leaves the office, throws his earmuffs in the locker room, grabs his backpack, the urn a hard weight in the bottom of it, and races for the hospital.

 

He drove twenty-four hundred miles in thirty-five hours, a steady rotation of _Kill 'Em All_, _The Number of the Beast_, _If You Want Blood_, and _Led Zeppelin IV_ on the tape deck. The T-bird was caked in mud and road dust, parked across the street from the hospital between a brand-new BMW and a vintage Porsche. He probably looked about as bad.

Sam was still in emergency for lack of a bed, lack of money; Dean could see him from the foyer. The nurses tried to corral him, keep him back, asking for ID and did he have insurance for his brother and where exactly _was_ John Winchester, since he was the patient's legal next-of-kin.

Past them, he could see Sam, quiet and pale with lurid red seeping around the white bandages on his head, needles taped to his arms and tubes taped to his face.

He kept trying to explain, to tell them their father couldn't make it, no, he didn't have any ID--it was stolen, could he please see his brother for fuck's sake--

After a while they seemed to comprehend the look on his face, the tone of his voice. One of them went with him to Sam's bed.

He touched the back of Sam's right hand, his fingernails broken and dirty. There were scabs on Sam's knuckles, older than whatever had put him in the hospital that night. Dean wondered who or what Sam hit hard enough to split his knuckles, and why. "What happened?" he asked the nurse. His father hadn't had time to tell him, if he even knew.

"Wrong place, wrong time," she said. "He was crossing the street and a bus driver lost control of his vehicle, jumped the median and hit him."

Dean wrapped his hand around the rail on the hospital bed and squeezed hard.

"The driver died--he probably had a heart attack. It was an accident, Mr. Winchester."

Dean shook his head. Sam was so still. The light inside the heart rate monitor on his left index finger glowed red. Dean believed in a lot of things that regular people didn't, and regular people believed in a lot of things that Dean found ridiculous.

There are no such things as accidents.

 

The city night is cold, a hard wind off the lake slowing through the streets, streetlights orange overhead and headlights ghostly white on the road, neon signs reflecting off metal and glass. Dean considers stopping at his apartment on the way to the hospital, to change out of his work clothes, but he can't risk it. It's an extra three blocks, and it's not like Sam's never seen him greasy and sweaty and dusty and worse.

In the lobby he stops for a minute, gathers himself, takes a deep breath. He buys a cup of coffee from the machine, thinking for the first time that the number of visits he has made, will make, to this place is finite. He won't be coming here every day for the rest of his life. He thinks his penance has been far too short.

The hospital is very quiet, more quiet than it is during his regular visits. It doesn't feel like he was only here nine hours ago--feels much longer. Like weeks. Like how could such a momentous change come over Sam when he was just here, not that long ago. The elevator has a faint chloroform scent to it, over the clean, rubbery smell he's used to.

The hallway of the extended care ward is just as long as it was earlier, fluorescent lights burning his retinas.

The file is gone from the holder beside Sam's door. The door is open.

 

"Can I have a minute?" he asked the emergency room nurse. She drew back from Dean and pulled the blue curtains around Sam's bed.

Dean looked down at his hands, at the scars on his own knuckles, the dusty cuffs of his denim jacket.

"I have something to say now," he said. "I couldn't say anything right before. Nothing to change it, make it better."

The curtain rustled and billowed as people rushed past outside, running feet, shouted orders.

Dean leaned over Sam, hoped he wouldn't wake up before he was done talking. Something he needed to say, not necessarily something Sam needed to hear. Wanted to hear.

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly, "I will never--. Whatever I have to do to make it like it never happened, I'll do it. Whatever you want me to do, Sam. Anything." He swallowed, his throat dry. "I'll do anything for you."

An ambulance screamed, more shouting.

"Anything, Sam. Always."

 

Dean enters the half-lit room. The white-coated doctors and bright-scrubbed nurses turn to look at him with blank faces.

Dr. Regier meets his eyes, his mouth tight. The people part and disperse, leaving Dean and the doctor and Sam. Sam's eyes are closed and the part of Dean that had been woken up with him starts to fall away again.

"Sam is sleeping normally," Dr. Regier says.

Dean nods. "Good," he says, trying not to sound relieved, trying to hide the fact that he can't tell between comatose and sleeping.

Dr. Regier holds Sam's file against his side. He comes to Dean, seems to gesture that they should go out in the hall. Dean shakes his head. The doctor inhales through his nose; he's always given Dean a faint sense of disapproval, as if Dean should not be related to Sam, as if he should not be trying his best to take whatever care of him he can. Dean can't imagine the sniffs and little coughs Dr. Regier would have for his father. They'd probably be pretty damn funny, though.

"There is a standard set of questions we ask post-comatose patients," the doctor says quietly.

Dean nods. He wants to get close enough to see Sam's eyelids moving, see him dreaming, but he feels like the doctor is a sphinx he has to defeat before he can get any further into the room.

"Where they are, their name, if they have any family--" Dr. Regier stops, portentously. Dean looks away from Sam, looks at the doctor. There is a sad cast to his middle-aged face.

Don't say it. Don't.

"Doctor--" quietly, from the bed.

Sam's eyes are open, he's looking at the doctor. Dean can't stop himself from moving forward a step and Sam catches the movement, stares at him.

Yell, please. Tell me to get away from you, ask me why the hell I'm here. Anything, anything, Sam.

"Sam," Dr. Regier says. He puts a hand on Dean's shoulder and draws him closer to the bed. Sam blinks. His forehead creases. "Sam," Dr. Regier says again, "do you know who this is?"

Dean hangs on to the metal footboard of Sam's bed, stares back at Sam. Anything, Sam.

Sam opens his mouth, his lips look painfully dry and Dean wants to hold the plastic cup of water for him, hold the straw for him. Sam squints and shakes his head.

"No," he says.

 

End.


End file.
